tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post2344422792102865704..comments2018-01-27T17:19:59.443-08:00Comments on Qlipoth: Easier to imagine the end of the world…Qlipothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-86220020524678723822016-11-27T08:39:03.015-08:002016-11-27T08:39:03.015-08:00I&#39;ve seen the remark attributed to Jameson and...I&#39;ve seen the remark attributed to Jameson and to Źiźek and am glad you made an effort to identify its origin. Thank you for this.John Branchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12323569021826786444noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-9145939236537327322009-11-27T17:28:24.438-08:002009-11-27T17:28:24.438-08:00Re Ballard, I always thought that, yes, he does se...Re Ballard, I always thought that, yes, he does see the end of Capitalism as &quot;the end of the world&quot; but also that his characters find great transcendant joy in the end of the world, in the iconoclastic process.<br /><br />Anyway, I&#39;ve got to read this Franklin article.Christonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-56076042930745678042009-11-13T11:59:20.553-08:002009-11-13T11:59:20.553-08:00Thanks Qlipoth. I actually emailed David Edwards a...Thanks Qlipoth. I actually emailed David Edwards about this but he hasn&#39;t responded. I&#39;m just wondering - would &quot;libertarian&quot; be more of an American word? i.e. more likely to be used by Americans? Certainly Ayn Rand doesn&#39;t seem so well known outside the states though, ominously, her books seem to be selling more here in Britain. Actually - I had a go at Atlas Shrugged but finally caved in after 100 pages when my brain imploded. It was like Ronald Reagan&#39;s wet dream.Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15498667889410345910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-55696933710136787082009-11-12T12:29:31.417-08:002009-11-12T12:29:31.417-08:00I don&#39;t see the term as useless or confusing a...I don&#39;t see the term as useless or confusing actually, although in the US especially it is used by people with very different political commitments and perspectives.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-44635815173039120332009-11-12T12:21:18.921-08:002009-11-12T12:21:18.921-08:00libertarian - one who insists that individual libe...libertarian - one who insists that individual liberty is a primary value and natural right (as deriving from human nature and human needs) so that the collectivity or the state has a very high threshhold of necessity to prove the acceptability of any restrictions. (restrictions on individual liberty are by no means ruled out, but the burden of justification is on those seeking to impose them, not those seeking to be free of them).<br /><br />the difference between right and left libertarianism is private property. left libertarians recognise that private property is power of people over other people, right libertarians basically see private property as power (acquired in competition by the fittest for the most part) over things not people.<br /><br />left libertarians (also called libertarian socialists and anarchists) do not accept private property in the means of social reproduction. so the idea is of an egalitarian society where competition is unnecessary but cooperation is voluntary, individuals are maximally free of coercion, and power is as widely distributed as possible. <br /><br />right libertarians posit private property in everything, accept and applaud immense disparities of wealth which they attribute to meritocratic results of competition, and therefore basically are advoicating the despotism of the rich with a special emphasis on the liberty of use of vast power over other people by individual members of the rich elite. their interest in individual liberty is to combat the fact that the rich are a minority and therefore seem threatened by the productive majorityt on democracries acting through the state. So they declare the state, insofar as it is the instrument or could be the instrument of a popular will, illegitimate, a despotism exerted by the majoirity against the individual and his property. they tend to be sympathetic - though not to advertise this - to the state actually when it is the instrumlenbt of the minority in a plutocracy, but as we see there was some &#39;grassroots&#39; middle class objection to the bank bailout among right wing libertarians in the US (Ron Paul voices that point of view). <br /><br /> So nietzsche is the most popular of all the right libertarian intellectuals and theorists, though ayn rand might be more typical of those who call themselves libertarians today.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-73164313801586812012009-11-12T11:41:22.281-08:002009-11-12T11:41:22.281-08:00Now this may be off topic but, a few posts back, s...Now this may be off topic but, a few posts back, someone mentioned the word “libertarian”. I’d love someone to explain what the fuck this word actually means. Chomsky seems pleased to use it to refer to himself. David Edwards of Medialens wrote a book – The Compassionate Revolution – where he tells us that Buddhism has vast “libertarian” potential. He then goes into great detail about Buddhism but tells us bugger all about libertarianism. But I’ve also read that Ayn Rand (!) was a libertarian. Curious – since Edwards’ compassionate revolution and Rand’s “philosophy” are, in fact, pure logical opposites. If “libertarian” can describe both then the term negates itself.<br /><br />So – is the L word a bullshit term that just muddies the waters to deflect everyone away from any genuine critical perspective? Or does it provide another instance of the old Nietzsche / Ballard manoeuvre i.e. that, within the realm of permitted discourse, it presents itself as the radical option but is really just a more glamorous version of business as usual?Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15498667889410345910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-6775431031628606052009-11-12T06:14:13.474-08:002009-11-12T06:14:13.474-08:00Antinomies of Postmodernity is really a great essa...Antinomies of Postmodernity is really a great essay though.<br /><br />But most of all reading it now reminds one of how eager and hasty retained intellectuals were to surrender completely to the neoliberal counterrevolution. and it&#39;s easy to see clearly how the production and naming of a new epoch was in the service of closing a progressive and revolutionary one with a suggestion of historical necessity. (Something Habermas noticed a few years before Jameson wrote this.)<br /><br />The erruption of intellectual creativity on display in the declarations of unconditional surrender is truly astonishing.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-26962929336662143872009-11-12T04:01:13.540-08:002009-11-12T04:01:13.540-08:00Also worth noting that &quot;easier to imagine the...Also worth noting that &quot;easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism&quot; seems to suggest (it&#39;s ambiguous) that &quot;the end of the world&quot; appears to everyone to be the more likely and plausible near future. The quip is hyperbole in the vein of &quot;hell freezing over&quot; before people can have socialism. But Jameson&#39;s actual remark is simply that postmodern culture product suggests that its producers find it easier to picture in detail the process of environmental collapse than of transformation of property relations:<br /><br />&quot;On this, individual experience (of a postmodern kind) tells us that it must be eternal, while our intelligence suggests this feeling to be most improbably indeed, without coming up with plausible scenarios as to its disintegration or replacement. It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; and perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.&quot;<br /><br />we can&#39;t produce the scenarios, he suggests. (another way of saying &quot;we&quot; don&#39;t have a revolutionary plan). That&#39;s not even convincing - that we have all these images of &quot;end of world&quot; from movies is true, but we don&#39;t have any plausible scenarios of these &quot;end of world&quot; futures that don&#39;t see capitalism end first. (what pop and mass culture have made it &quot;easy to imagine&quot; is that the end of capitalism causes the end of the world.)<br /><br />But it&#39;s a throwaway line. But when you think about it, it is part of that Reagan era cultural project; he&#39;s insisting on something that would be convenient for the US ruling class were it true but isn&#39;t actually true. He&#39;s trying to convince his readers that it is true without making a case; it&#39;s a pretty clear instance of using the attractions of literary and culture criticism to advance implausible weak cases regarding politics and economics. He&#39;s announcing the Fukuyamist end of history, but positioning himself as having a more sophisticated version with caveats. Evidence that is unavailable is substituted for with speculation and descriptions of fictions and art. And he&#39;s suggesting that it&#39;s not really his judgement, but the judgement of &quot;postmodernism&quot; - the whole discouse is justified by a goal of describing cultural postmodernism, so that the political case it pretends to make in the course of that descruiption is weak or wrong cannot be viewed as a flaw worthy of rebuttal - whose judgement is however irresistible somehow, like a epochal Geist. <br /><br />So I&#39;m going to change my mind now and leave own the possibility that it really is part of this reactionary hegelianisation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-20299081158922478902009-11-12T03:32:51.671-08:002009-11-12T03:32:51.671-08:00so it seems though that the zizz is actually respo...so it seems though that the zizz is actually responsible for the transformation that performs the orwellian operations of the reagan era cultural practise. From remarks on the ideology of culture products and producers (both from Franklin and Jameson) to mystical revelations about the universal psyche.<br /><br />should have known!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-46050343093463629682009-11-12T03:20:07.418-08:002009-11-12T03:20:07.418-08:00yeah I think I knew that but forgot, now I seem to...yeah I think I knew that but forgot, now I seem to remember a prior discussion. But that essay is even closer to the Franklin in time and represents a kind of inappropriate abstraction that is in that hegelian direction, although in context it is not clear to whom &quot;it seems that&quot; and how wrong that perception can be assumed to be...<br /><br />But there is this one degree of mystification from Franklin&#39;s examination of the texts of apocalypticism and disaster and their ascendancy and how they express the conditions of their creation and specific reactions to them, to Jameson&#39;s inauguration of the slippage to the Geist or Jungian race/hive collective that these texts now serve as straightforwardly the thoughts of. Jameson never gets all the way there actually - he stops short of declaring mass culture products to be the spontaneous dreams of the Spirit of the West or whatever. But he takes a step away from Marxism back toward mysticism and Hegel. A small step, regretted, but this is why his work can be included (poorly understood) in all these conversations that sound like what you&#39;d expect to overhear at video night at the masonic lodge. And how it happens that he has supplied jokes for the zizzz show.<br /><br />But I hope everyone will read the Franklin, it really lets you measure the stupidification that has taken place between the late 70s an the zizz era.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-73805329154207831872009-11-11T19:53:13.125-08:002009-11-11T19:53:13.125-08:00sorry kenoma, didn&#39;t read the comments.sorry kenoma, didn&#39;t read the comments.traxus4420http://traxus4420.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-52844371747947361462009-11-11T18:37:25.673-08:002009-11-11T18:37:25.673-08:00ok, got it -- it&#39;s from &quot;Antinomies of Po...ok, got it -- it&#39;s from &quot;Antinomies of Postmodernism&quot; which appears in <i>Seeds of Time</i> (94) and <i>Cultural Turn</i> (98).<br /><br />&quot;it seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; and perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imagination.&quot;traxus4420http://traxus4420.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-76696735072755388892009-11-11T17:25:09.468-08:002009-11-11T17:25:09.468-08:00it might be a joke on how everyone keeps using &#3...it might be a joke on how everyone keeps using &#39;his&#39; (misremembered) catchphrase.traxus4420http://traxus4420.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-4501528695546686402009-11-11T17:24:06.594-08:002009-11-11T17:24:06.594-08:00&quot;I don&#39;t mean to diss Jameson, as you kno...&quot;I don&#39;t mean to diss Jameson, as you know I never do, I think he&#39;s really important, a great literary critic, and impressively humble enough to take criticism about eurocentrism and stuff (from Spivak say) and learn and improve.&quot;<br /><br />ah. i didn&#39;t know you were you.<br /><br />and i had really thought that future city piece was the first appearance of the slogan. i&#39;m not sure when zizek first started using it -- here&#39;s him attributing it to jameson in 1994:<br /><br />http://books.google.com/books?id=rAZ0A4QUMtEC&amp;pg=PA173&amp;lpg=PA173&amp;dq=&quot;easier+to+imagine&quot;+zizek&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=ATHGMC4zQh&amp;sig=8FGlpUDX4nCEXKEap9tEXRSfNEs&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=DmP7SrXOHYXZnAfjqqmeBQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=3&amp;ved=0CBAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;q=&quot;easier to imagine&quot; zizek&amp;f=false<br /><br />but it seems we&#39;re back to folklore again.traxus4420http://traxus4420.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-91030652364246575022009-11-11T14:35:36.687-08:002009-11-11T14:35:36.687-08:00Here 1996
&quot;Marxist critic Fredric Jameson wr...<a href="http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Features/econ.html" rel="nofollow">Here 1996</a><br /><br />&quot;Marxist critic Fredric Jameson writes that these days, it seems easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.&quot;Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-61342143710104189102009-11-11T14:30:15.533-08:002009-11-11T14:30:15.533-08:00oh is &#39;someone once said&#39; there a joke (be...oh is &#39;someone once said&#39; there a joke (because zizek was already claiming to have said this and then everyone was saying no it was Jameson? when Jameson never had said quite that?Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-68109984223865387122009-11-11T14:23:21.550-08:002009-11-11T14:23:21.550-08:00curiosity
must
improbablecuriosity<br />must<br />improbableQlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-21283946869090882892009-11-11T14:18:00.155-08:002009-11-11T14:18:00.155-08:00&quot;the best contemporary bourgeois ideology can...&quot;the best contemporary bourgeois ideology can up with is a rehashing of a mythology which is literally as old as Genesis: but what distinguishes bourgeois ideology from mythology is its ability and eagerness to treat these old yarns as the latest must-have things.&quot;<br /><br />yes. and it is really a bit startling how short the memories are now. of course, mass culture has been targeting teenagers for a long time and lots of things seem new to teens, since they are not educated yet. but now this teen hatchling wonder extends to people of 35.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-72914989581021942052009-11-11T14:13:42.851-08:002009-11-11T14:13:42.851-08:00But even there he is paraphrasing someone else&#39...But even there he is paraphrasing someone else&#39;s (some generic postmodernist) position-<br /><br /><i>Even after the ‘end of history’ there has seemed to persist some historical curiositt of a generally systemic – rather than merely anecdotal – kind: not merely to know what will happen next, but as a more general anxiety about the larger fate or destiny of our system or mode of production. On this, individual experience (of a postmodern kind) tells us that it mist be eternal, while our intelligence suggests this feeling to be most improbably indeed, without coming up with plausible scenarios as to its disintegration or replacement. It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; and perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.<br /><br />I have come to think the word &#39;postmodern&#39; ought to be reserved for thoughts of this kind.</i>Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-67445198768456570002009-11-11T13:40:35.731-08:002009-11-11T13:40:35.731-08:00Great post.
From The Cultural Turn (1998, and extr...Great post.<br />From The Cultural Turn (1998, and extracted from &#39;The Antinomies of Postmodernity&#39;, 1989):<br /> “It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; and perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imagination.”<br /><br />Not as appropriable as a slogan obviously - and Jameson obviously miscalculated in 2003 by thinking that the &#39;weakness in our imagination&#39; bit would go without saying. <br />His meaning is pretty clear I think: the best contemporary bourgeois ideology can up with is a rehashing of a mythology which is literally as old as Genesis: but what distinguishes bourgeois ideology from mythology is its ability and eagerness to treat these old yarns as the latest must-have things.kenomanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-3511440475886792192009-11-11T11:43:51.978-08:002009-11-11T11:43:51.978-08:00Deleuze&#39;s support for neoliberal financialisat...Deleuze&#39;s support for neoliberal financialisation and financial globalisation was presented as a &quot; radicalisation of anticapitalism&quot; - wiyth the universalisation of the capitalist corporation&#39;s experience and welfare (freeing capital to own and exploit everything is an increase in liberty in general). <br /><br />This is the position from which the quip is intelligible and perceived as &quot;leftist&quot; somehow (the way &quot;It&#39;s not TV, It&#39;s HBO&quot; actually counts as a Marxist analysis of culture commodities and media now).Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-48006592961062603202009-11-11T11:38:40.449-08:002009-11-11T11:38:40.449-08:00Oh and I don&#39;t meant to say the remark is &quo...Oh and I don&#39;t meant to say the remark is &quot;accurate&quot;...<br /><br />by the reagan era&#39;s strategy in culture I meant the assertion of the universalisality of the experience of the ruling class and then the presentation, as George notes, of this class&#39; fears and fantasies as the most radical left dissident positions. an example is the nietzschean individualism that replaces its antithesis -socialism - but often takes the name, or presents itself as a &#39;radicalisation&#39; of what it opposes and seeks to destroy. That is the reagan era&#39;s strategy in culture and ideology - like the adoption of the identity of libertarian individualism against big government and now it&#39;s refined to all the feminist bombings of afghanistan and the antifascist wars of extermination etc..Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-29002009557998329372009-11-11T11:18:47.215-08:002009-11-11T11:18:47.215-08:00&quot;devious (&quot;relentless, Orwellian cultura...&quot;devious (&quot;relentless, Orwellian cultural strategy)&quot;<br /><br />Sorry I meant to say there was a relentless orwellian cultural strategy - some of the practitioners of which were arguably devious - whose results Jameson&#39;s error of memory mimics exactly. Not because he meant to - but it&#39;s not an accident either. It&#39;s because of the success of this relentless strategy that such an error is so natural (for anyone).Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-70697444810521639832009-11-11T11:04:09.998-08:002009-11-11T11:04:09.998-08:00George, yes the tip of an ugly iceberg. And today ...George, yes the tip of an ugly iceberg. And today there is a consensus of commodity dissidents now that not long ago there was a great white supremacist civilisation, peaceable and prosperous (though of course there are always exceptional imperfections), capitalist and democractic, and now it is decadent and this decadence is due to the uppitiness of the racial inferiors and their absurd demands and ridiculous attempts to mimic the truly advanced human beings.<br /><br />But I read something great recently; I can hardly believe it was good, I expected something fasho from the cover and the raves, but these teen novels by Suzanne Collins, Hunger Games and Catching Fire...here if it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism it is only because the ruling elite is so depraved and so powerful it will blow up the world before it accepts any diminution of its despotism and monopoly.<br /><br /> and this is what the endless stream of prefab &quot;imaginings&quot; of the end of the world is meant to remind people I&#39;ve no doubt, though the elite does not take responsibility directly but instead presents its own prepared response to revolt, even to the wish for revolt, as nature/act of God. <br /><br />But I think we can say that when people quote this &quot;imagining the end of the world&quot; they really mean &quot;remembering a disaster movie I saw&#39; but no longer can distinguish between passively remembering a movie and &quot;imagining&quot; something real. (and I mean real not &#39;real&#39;)<br /><br />Traxus: I didn&#39;t mean to criticise Jameson - it is a quip in Hegelese he is not advancing himself, but one he thinks somebody made once and he doesn&#39;t seem to have ever been on board with it as an assertion. (When I believed it must have been his remark somehow or other, I had always assumed he had advanced it as a description of the condition in an audience that it was the aim of cocaculture disaster films to create, to make it easier....etc) The memory of the actual source inspiration I honestly suspect is so distorted because over twenty years it was easy to forget that anyone ever wrote academically about this stuff in a genuinely marxist, and not idealist adornian hegelian, way.<br /><br />I don&#39;t mean to diss Jameson, as you know I never do, I think he&#39;s really important, a great literary critic, and impressively humble enough to take criticism about eurocentrism and stuff (from Spivak say) and learn and improve. <br /><br />Baudrillard on the other hand was a right wing crazy actually, a loathesome racist and amazingly ignorant of just about everything. Like Marshall McLuhan he was nonetheless observant about certain things considered in isolation. He watched a lot of television and was intuitive about his experience. A kind of idiot savant but not so savant really.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-70296813263928858022009-11-11T10:22:53.753-08:002009-11-11T10:22:53.753-08:00great post, i was talking to someone about the att...great post, i was talking to someone about the attribution to this just the other day, since zizek has recently been claiming it as his own. but when we found the meme couched in &quot;someone once said...&quot; we were suddenly in the realm of folklore.<br /><br />question about this:<br /><br />&quot;Jameson’s vague quip in Hegelese regarding the disposition of some amorphous and unspecified Geist of the Zeit perfectly exemplifies the relentless, Orwellian cultural strategy which characterised the Reagan era’s political reaction in culture.&quot;<br /><br />so long as he stays away from the &#39;3rd world literature as national allegory&#39; stuff i never feel while reading him that, like ballard, he isn&#39;t aware of communicating only to his own class, from his own class position of people who consume this stuff regularly. but you make it sound like he&#39;s somehow duped (&quot;perfectly exemplifies&quot;), devious (&quot;relentless, Orwellian cultural strategy&quot;), and accurate (&quot;characterised the Reagan era&#39;s political reaction in culture,&quot; the overt subject of the essay) all at the same time. <br /><br />not to pick on you, but i&#39;ve been thinking about these kinds of left reactions to people like jameson and baudrillard over sins of omission. it seems to me the criticism only holds if the writer is striving for a generality that isn&#39;t earned. i don&#39;t think that&#39;s the case with jameson in this essay (a frankfurt style interpretation of an elite auteur, albeit with typical jamesonian affectlessness), and (unlike say baudrillard or zizek, who want to be rock stars) not the case with most of his writing.traxus4420http://traxus4420.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com